I "roleplay" as my characters.

It's not quite the same as you are asking, but it does help me get to what a character wants (their desire vs their need) and how they see their own path to get there. It helps me imagine what their limits would be when sharing their feelings with other characters.

My issue with feeling what my character feels times 11 is that I usually have 2 or more characters in a scene who have different motives, potentially different emotional states, and they aren't always revealing their emotions honestly. My scene will lean sympathy towards the character who has the most stakes at that moment, but I'm generally trying to get the reader to see multiple sides to an issue through multiple characters.

This will be different depending on your style, POV, and genre. Some characters and stories are more about the internal state than others.

Change of emotions is narratively stronger than conveying a single emotion.

I also try to "zoom in" on the moment when their emotional state changes, the moment Robert McKee calls a character's turn:

Look closely at each scene you’ve written and ask: What value is at stake in my character’s life at this moment? Love? Truth? What? How is that value charged at the top of the scene? Positive? Negative? Some of both? Make a note. Next turn to the close of the scene and ask, Where is this value now? Positive? Negative? Both? Make a note and compare. If the answer you write down at the end of the scene is the same note you made at the opening, you now have another important question to ask: Why is this scene in my script?

From experience (and experimenting) I agree with McKee: the change of emotional state is more powerful to the reader than descriptions of extreme empathy.

Every character has some emotional reaction when they change one of their values, but those emotions aren't always the true story. I often have a character act impulsively and deal with the emotional fallout later (younger characters especially). Emotions serve a different narrative role when they trail actions. A character struggles with what they've done, as opposed to putting all the emotions first as a lead in to their (re)actions.

I find in real life people have all kinds of emotions completely disconnected from their actions, and I can put my characters on a spectrum of having a lot of disconnected emotions that complicate their decision-making vs characters who don't allow their emotional state to influence their actions at all. In stories, our MCs don't have full autonomy, they are our puppets and they do what the plot demands, they are far more active and reactive than real life. "Honest" emotions can get in the way – but again, it probably has more to do with your genre. A "finding yourself" novel/memoir is probably all about vicariously indulging in the MC's internal emotions.

While all characters are somewhat autobiographical, I'm writing fiction, not an autobiography

In my opinion, an author needs healthy emotional separation from the characters so she understands when to allow the MCs to be unsympathetic, make bad choices, get themselves in trouble, and unconsciously be rude and harmful to other characters.

If every character is just an avatar for my own emotional state it's a lot harder for me to stop them from becoming Mary Sues designed to flatter me, and all secondary characters acting just to enable the Mary Sue moments. Of course in an erotic novel, the MC might just be a Mary Sue, and all secondary characters really do exist just to flatter his fantasy. YMMV.

I'd rather write characters who act like themselves.

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